Arizona Republicans ask voters to block teacher-backed ESA accountability initiative

Arizona Republican lawmakers voted Friday to put three education-related measures on the November ballot, one of which could potentially render a teacher-backed school voucher accountability initiative void.

• House Concurrent Resolution 2048 would keep the state from removing money from a military family’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA).
• HCR2040 would would ban school districts from allowing public money and resources, including campus facilities, to be used by teachers unions.
• HCR2007 would require schools with more than 7,500 students, or any school in Maricopa or Pima counties, to spend at least 60% of district funding on classroom instruction.

Concurrent resolutions allow lawmakers to refer measures to voters without the governor’s approval. The Republican-controlled Legislature has used them often in an effort to bypass Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto stamp.

How would GOP measure affect teacher-backed ESA initiative?

HCR2048 is also known as the Military Families College Savings and Scholarship Protection Act. In addition to protecting military families’ ESAs, it voids the entirety of any other bill or ballot measure that violates it.

The ESA program allows families to use public education tax dollars for private school or homeschooling expenses. Money left over in the accounts after high school can be used for college. The program has faced backlash over alleged fraud, leading education advocates to create two similar ballot initiatives seeking to hold it to a higher level of accountability.

A pair of teacher-backed organizations — advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona and union Arizona Education Association — are collecting signatures for what would be the most restrictive of the ESA reform plans. That measure includes an income cap and pulls any leftover funds from ESAs back into the state’s general fund.

A political action committee called Fortify AZ is working on a separate ballot initiative that would increase ESA oversight, but it doesn’t include an income cap or restrictions on using leftover funds for college.

Republican state Rep. Michael Way said that the teacher-backed ballot initiative would be voided by HCR2048 if they both pass.

“This measure here makes clear that the voters of Arizona have no tolerance for measures that sneak in provisions that harm our military families. … This amendment strikes down such egregious measures, including the currently proposed anti-ESA ballot initiative,” Way, who wrote HCR2048, said during a caucus meeting Friday.

Democratic state Sen. Priya Sundarshen argued that HCR2048 is a Republican effort to block any ESA accountability.

“This is a very rushed ballot referral,” Sundarshen said before voting against it. “We only saw the language maybe an hour or two ago. … It is ultimately clear that although it is called military families, this is about far more than that. It is it is about the Republican attempt to protect ESA vouchers from any sort of accountability ever,” she said.

Meanwhile, Save Our Schools Arizona took to social media to call HCR2048 “a devious ballot referral done in the dead of the night that aims to VOID the will of AZ voters — using military families as pawns.”

Republicans know that Arizonans are sick of the fraud, waste, & abuse in the ESA voucher progam & will pass the Protect Ed Act.

Their solution❓ A devious ballot referral done in the dead of the night that aims to VOID the will of AZ voters – using military families as pawns. pic.twitter.com/B3MhHe99cI

— Save Our Schools AZ (@arizona_sos) June 14, 2026

Republican Sen. Mark Finchem said that adding another option to the November ballot gives Arizonans more control over their education system.

“I’ll repeat what I said in committee, that a choice of one really is no choice at all. So, if we have a choice between two, perhaps three, opportunities for the voters to make a decision, [that] is very constitutional,” Finchem said before voting yes on HCR2048.

Republicans fail to pass their version of an ESA accountability bill

GOP lawmakers attempted to pass their own school voucher reform bill Friday as an alternative to the ESA reform ballot initiatives.

House Bill 2142 would have created accountability requirements for the school voucher program without an income cap.

KJZZ reported that Republicans and the Arizona Education Association agreed to a deal where lawmakers would drop the union-restricting HCR2040 and pass HR2142 if the union pulled the plug on its ESA reform ballot initiative.

However, the agreement fell apart when Arizona Senate President Warren Peterson and Sen. Jake Hoffman joined the Democrats in their chamber to vote down HB2142.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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